Watch Watchmen

Watchmen was fucking awesome. Plain and simple, go see it (don't worry, no spoilers in this post). Do you have to be a fan of the comic (or know the comic) to enjoy it? I don't think so, but its hard for me to say since I am. Just know going in that there is a lot of graphic violence and sex and that the movie is very dark. Very dark. And very graphic, especially with the violence. The sex is actually pretty tame when compared to the violence. That is, unless you count all the time you see a blue-CGI'ed penis, which is quite a few (seriously). But I can't stress the violence enough; if you can't stand violence, Watchmen might not be for you. Based on the audible gasps and the fact that a few people walked out part of the way through the movie, I'm guessing some people in the theater didn't quite know what they were getting into. Oh well. I thought it was incredible, and my complaints (few as they are) have to do with visual style and casting and nothing to do with the story or how it was told.

Complaint #1- all the damn slow motion. We get it, Zack Snyder, it looks cool when you slow down time and then speed it up real quick to catch up; we all saw 300. Watchmen is a long movie (2:43, I believe), and I swear it could have been a half hour shorter if all the slo-mo had been dropped. Okay, so there's not that much slo-mo, but there's a lot. Its used in pretty much every action sequence. I get that its just a director's visual style, but its been done to death (see: Bay, Michael).

Complaint #2- Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias. A lot of reviews I read pegged Malin Akerman as the weak casting link, but I think it was Goode. And its not that he's a weak actor, I just think he was miscast. You don't believe for a second that he's the "smartest man in the world", and if you do believe that, you certainly don't believe that he physically capabable to do what he does in the movie. And then there's this odd accent that comes and goes with him. The first time we see Adrian Veidt, he's got this strange, indecernable accent, but later in the movie, he's got nothing at all. It was a little distracting. Aside for Ozymandias, I thought the rest of the movie was cast well, especially Jackie Earle Haley and Patrick Wilson.

There's a lot of talk about the movie altering the climactic ending from that in the comic; don't worry about it. I don't think the original ending would have worked on screen. They cut elements from the story that tie into the original ending (and they were right in doing that), so without those story points, the original ending wouldn't have made any sense. What they changed it to works better in the context of the story and achieves the exact same intended outcome. In fact, I dare say that the movie's ending achieves that outcome in a more complete and all-encompassing way than the comic.

So all-in-all, I loved Watchmen. Its totally worth seeing again in the theater, and I might do just that before the weekend's over.